Summarise what you learned as a result of doing this task and how this may or may not be useful to you:
The quality of recorded sound is the most vital part of a radio cut or podcast. As there are no visuals involved, the sound is all that the listener has to focus on. This means there shouljd be no distracting background noises and music and sound effects should only be used if it enhances the quality of the piece.
Through my experience I have learnt that you need to be very careful when recording sound, and find the quietest place possible for recording time. Even the slightest bump of the recording device can have a huge impact on the quality of sound. I found that you also need to be careful in where you place the recording device and make sure that it is in the same place for hte entire of hte interview other wise there will be softer and louder sound which will impact on the final result.
I improved my skills in using Garage Band as this is only the second time I have used it. There are still many aspects of the software that I do not understand but this assignment has helped me to improve in some way.
The skills that I have learnt through this assignment will help me in the future in relation to the creation of podcasts as a teacher. I think that podcasts are a great tool to use in the classroom to give the students a learning experience that is meaningful to them. I could certainly use podcasts with my students in the future in a variety of ways, for example: students could undertake research on a specific topic and present their findings through voice recording, and these recordings could be shared with family, the school and the community.
Other then learning about the technical aspects such as recording devices and editing software that i used during this assignment, I also learnt many things from the person I interviewed. Jackie gave me an excellent insight into her past life in China and it has made me appreciate the relaxed life that we all have here in Australia!
Mention what planning you did, issues with editing/publishing process and how pleased you are with the result:
The first thing i had to do to begin this assignement was to choose who i would interview. I have been working at a cafe that is owned by an Chinese couple for the past two years, this has made me interested in the Chinese culture and intruiged to find out more. I decided to interview one of the Chinese employees, Jackie, who works in the kitchen and find out a bit more about her life. I came up with a set of questions that i could use as a guide when speaking to Jackie. I then interviewed Jackie in the cafe after we had closed up.
I had to make sure there was minimal background sound so we went in a quiet corner, however part way through the interview there were a few noisy distractions which has shown up in parts of my final product, but have been fixed to the best of my ability at the time.
From past experiences in creating podcasts i have learnt that recording devices are not always trustworthy so I used two recording devices this time, just incase one failed on me. I used my laptop to record as well as my iPhone. The iPhone proved to be of the best quality so this is what I used to create the final product. I think my sound quality was okay, but not the best. There were a few background distractions and also i few knocking sounds from the table that the recording device was placed on during the interview.
I decided to use Garage Band on a Macintosh laptop to edit my recording. Previously I have used Audacity and Garage Band, but decided on Garage Band because I find it much easier and more effective to use. I did not have any major problems with using this program as it was pretty straight forward and I taught myself the basic tools and techniques.
I came across a few difficulties during the process of editing. As the person I interviewed is Chinese I found it hard to understand her pronounciation of some words. There were some parts of the interview that I would have liked to include in my final product, however it was too hard to understand what she was saying so decided against using these parts.
I believe that I did a good job in cutting down my 10 minute interview to a 2 minute and 20 second radio cut. There was so much information that I wanted to use, however I had to choose which bits to keep and which bits to cut. I began this process by highlighting the most important parts on my transript and then began editing and listening through over and over again until I had cut out as much as possible, with it still making sense, and changed the order of some parts to make it sound more like a story.
I am quite pleased with the result of my radio cut. I think that my sound quality could have been improved by recording in a more quiet area, however I am still happy with the result. I decided to include a background sound track because I believe it did enhance the final product. I used a piece of music that was from the Garage Band software called "Lotus," because it had a Chinese feel to it which I believe made the final product more appreciating.
Summarise what you learned as a result of doing this task and how this may or may not be useful to you:
Mention what planning you did, issues with editing/publishing process and how pleased you are with the result: